September 17, 2007

Thank Zod for autumn. I have 6 cans of pumpkin in my pantry that need to get outta’ there and make room for something else. I don’t even know where they came from, it’s possible that I just kept forgetting if I had any canned pumpkin and my collection grew and grew, or it could be the canned pumpkin fairy. And I can’t eat pumpkin in warm weather, it throws off my equilibrium.

Last night I made these Pumpkin Pie Brownies. It’s a brownie base with pumpkin in the batter and then pumpkin pie filling is poured on top and they bake together in perfect harmony. Obviously, these would be like gold at any Halloween event.

September 15, 2007

Absolutely perfect for a rainy morning. Even though it eventually stopped raining. I can’t give you the recipe because I was recipe testing for the second issue of Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk, but I can share these photos.

July 20, 2007

That was my Seinfeld impression (what’s the deal with…), thank you very much.

I’m saying though – they look so pretty and modern but I would think that it would be a pain to eat a cupcake out of one. From my many years of field research in icies eating, it seems that you need to rip the rim apart to get to the cupcake. Don’t you lose a little bit of the grace that standard cupcake liners afford? I thought that peeling back the wrapper is part of the cupcake ritual that we hold dear. Am I just a luddite? Enlighten me.

May 21, 2007

I love hoveringdog’s cupcakes. What’s more, I love that he is a guy and decorates them so beautifully. And it makes me wish that I didn’t think things like, “Oh wow! A guy who bakes cupcakes!” Someday “guy who bakes cupcakes” will be redundant.

May 15, 2007

I remember doing a demo against McDonald’s in the early nineties. We had the bright idea to not just protest but to bring food, too, that way we could offer people an alternative to a Big Mac. Genius, right? If only we had brought actual food that people wanted to eat. Instead it was, and the shame is with me to this day, Fantastic Food Falafel. Yes, falafel from a box. Now look at McDonalds, they’re even bigger, and it’s all our fault.

So it makes me happy to see these cupcakes from Sugar Crash Mobile Bakery’s debut, a benefit for Josh Harper. The revolution will be frosted.

On Earth Day 1990 I awoke to my best friend telling me that my grandmother had just died. The day before my cat had died and my boyfriend had cheated on me with a green haired girl who was always at every punk show.

But Earth Day that year was a big deal. It was the 20th anniversary of the holiday, and although the day wasn’t really on the radar in the 20 years since 1970, the 80s were over and I suppose people were thinking that it was as good a time as any to stop snorting cocaine and go green again. So I went to Central Park with my anarchist youth collective as I had planned, there was no point sitting around in Brooklyn crying when I could be in the park with my friends. Crying.

One of our first orders of business once on the Upper East Side was to go cardboard box surfing. That is, you flatten out a cardboard box on the sidewalk, run towards it as fast as you can, jump on it and see how far you can slide. Depending on the sidewalk and the slipperiness of the box it was usually only a few feet, maybe 10 if you were really little and really lucky.

A woman with an expensive baby stroller and big sunglasses shouted at us, “You are doing this on Earth Day?” Of course, these boxes were destined for the garbage dump, any amount of surfing on them wasn’t going to make the environmental situation any worse. In fact, kudos to us for finding fun with garbage instead of sitting home, playing video games and using electricity.

Once in the park, a comfortable distance from where the B-52s were playing, we lay in the grass and did whatever teenagers do on the grass. I rolled over onto my back, away from my friends and looked up to the sky through my purple tinted sunglasses (can anyone but a teenager appreciate the world through colored lenses?). I thought about my grandma and my cat. Since that time, my first instinct whenever a loved one dies is to look up at the sky and wonder “Where the fuck did you go?”

The last time I had spoken to my grandma she had asked me to bring her mirror and make-up to the hospital. I thought of how she wasn’t just able to say that she wanted to see me one last time. I felt guilty because I never did bring her make-up and mirror and how I should have known that what she really meant was that she loved me, even if I did paint my face white and dye my hair purple. I thought about how I don’t want to grow old that way – afraid to tell people I love them.

Garbage was accumulating all around us, and it wasn’t ours. Hoards of people were making their way through the park, dropping McDonald’s wrappers and Budweiser empties and whatever else they didn’t want to deal with. I picked up a McDonald’s Earthday napkin and read the missive on it. It talked about how McDonald’s was committed to the environment and how the napkin was whatever percentage recycled material.

Did you ever make a promise to yourself that you will never forget? I can remember a few. For some reason when I was walking up my elementary school stairs in second grade I stopped, looked at the building and thought, “Never forget this day.” And I haven’t, it was March 9th. I have no idea why I wanted to remember it, other than that I was catching on to the fleetingness of life. But on Earth Day, April 22nd 1990, in the grass in Central Park, I thought it again and this time I do remember what I was thinking.

Don’t believe the lies that napkins tell you, don’t grow old and afraid of love, don’t ever stop looking up at the sky and wondering.

I had some sense at the time how hard these things would be, but 17 years later- exactly 2 times the age I was then- I’m trying to get back on track. I don’t want to disappoint that 17 year old because I feel like she’s the wisest person I know. Also, she might kick my ass if I don’t follow through.

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Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World is the lovechild of Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. We're changing the world one cupcake at a time. Click here to order from Amazon or walk on over to your local store and have them get it for you.